Artbook
A mobile companion at the art gallery
Role
Independent design & prototype challenge
Time
5 days
Type
Design sprint based on existing 3rd party user research
Tools
Hand sketching,
Rapid ideation
Adobe XD
Day 1
Understanding
On the first day I immersed myself in the problem by reading user research and listening to expert interviews. I looked for the commonalities. I found that the problem could be understood through several primary frustrations.
1.
Googling art in the museum is often too information-dense, people desire concise tidbits of the most relevant, and interesting information.
2.
People often feel like they're not taking it in. They lack the context to appreciate what they’re looking at without getting the whole story.
3.
Taking tours can be useful but some like to explore at their own pace and meander as they please.
Persona
Who is this for?
Angela is a casual but regular art viewer. She often goes to see whichever exhibition might be on show at the moment. She enjoys visiting museums but often feels like she’s missing the context and information that would really help her appreciate and get the most out of what she’s looking at. She tries to do research beforehand but finds a lot of dense material that is too in-depth to hold her attention and doesn’t always relate well to the specific exhibition.
Angela - 31 years old. Junior art director.
Goal - quick, digestible information on context
Frustration - Often lacks the context to appreciate the art and finds available information too dense.
Behavior - A frequent gallery visitor but a casual art lover.
"I enjoy going to the museum, but I often leave feeling like I didn't appreciate the art to it's full potential" - Angela
Day 2
Sketching
Before sketching I looked at what's already out there. What's already tackling this problem?
Many museums create their own apps, a different experience from museum to museum. Some had interesting ideas. SF Moma built a location dependent audio experience - supporting our desire to roam freely and explore at our own pace.
Starting with the user feedback and a persona I wrote down a number of questions to frame the key problems. I refined the list and landed on a few starting points for investigation.
How might we...?
Framing the problem
1.
How might we accumulate the most relevant and interesting information for a work of art?
We would like to curate the right information for each work. Could there be a way to distribute the work of curation? Could we connect to existing databases - wikipedia, wikiart, Google, the museum itself? - but in a digestible format? Could gallery goers play a role in curating content?
2.
How might we personalize the information for each user?
Many come with different levels of knowledge and different interests. Users expressed a desire to form their own opinion and make their own connection with the work. Experiencing art is personal. Can we take this into account and deliver curated tidbits of information that are relevant and compelling? Can users direct what kind of information they prefer?
Looking to the end...
I took a step back and unplugged from notions of practicality for a moment to imagine the ideal experience. I picture the moment you’re standing before a piece that captures your interest. You want to know more.
You reach for your phone and in a seamless way you're connected with a spread of information about the art piece before you. You then see a series of bite-size packets of information that bring the art to life - the formative parts of the artist’s life and how its captured in a detail in the foreground, or a particularly unexpected genesis behind an extraordinary technique. Whatever the most compelling - for people generally, but also for you personally, because you have a particular interest in technique or cultural context.
And beyond a single work you would be able to make connections to other works and artists that would engage the same flavor of curiosity. Feeding your spirit of expoloration and building a rich map of contextual meaning around it so you take it in and recall it later.
Early Sketches
Viewer interaction drives content creation
In this early sketch I target viewer interaction as a feedback loop of content curation and customization. Could we create an experience that invites users to indicate what is important and meaningful to them and use this to better curate bite-size packets of information that are increasingly relevant to individual experience and exploration?
Mapping a possible solution
I mapped several paths through a possible experience. Eventually I landed on something that centered around a “Title Card” page where one sees curated content and then followed it with a place where one might be able to look back and see their journey through the exhibition.
Visitors can save photos and snippets of information. Could this encourage user interaction and feedback about what information is compelling and what information they prefer?
Critical screen - the “Title Card Page”
To start I focused on understanding the experience of the “Title Card Page” - the moment when a viewer makes contact with curated information.
At the top you see the artwork. The information below is split between a standard view and a space for the gallery to curate its own information. Galleries can participate to create their own presence on the app.
Information is broken into quotable snippets, each one like a card in a stack which sorts in order to surface the most relevant cards for each user. Top performing cards (the most relevant) are pinned to the top, and beneath these the user sees a list of cards sorted according to their interest settings and previous interatctions.
Iterating the user interface
With the basic information architecture in place it's time to explore different ways to interact with the content. Maybe we can zoom in on details and see the information deck repopulate with cards relevant the the detail in the frame - or perhaps we swipe one way to explore similar artists or influences, and swipe the other way to see similar artworks - a way to explore art beyond the gallery. I imagined interaction buttons that would be prominent and context-driven to invite user feedback.
Day 3
Deciding
On day 3 I sharpened up the user flow and diagrammed the screen layouts in more detail in preparation for creating a fucntional prototype. 3 primary screens emerged. The camera, the title card page, and the art journal page - a place to memorialize your experience at the art gallery.
"Camera at launch"
"Title Card Page"
"My Art Journal"
Day 4
Prototyping
On the fourth day I spent 5 hours building a digital prototype. The goal was to create a realistic simulation of the intended experience. I cut out a number of features in order to target the essential functionality.
Camera at launch
Artbook launches with the camera screen - ready to ID. A search function is available if the ID fails. The image is recognized by matching it with a database. The database is built up over time or could be synced with existing databases.
Title card page
This is the primary experience during the museum visit. The information is sorted into digestible packets - factoids - color-coded cards that indicate certain categories of information. Select “From the Gallery” to see content created by the museum. The most popular few cards are pinned to the top and below these each individual user sees a personalized list of cards most interesting to them.
My Art Journal
Save photos and snippets of your day at the museum. Come back and relive the visit in the order you explored it. Keep a record of what captivated you. Memorialize what was meaningful.
Each visit to an exhibition is tied together on a timeline - a column in a series of visits to various galleries. This is a place to come back and view a work in the context of the memory you made of it, in time and space.
My Saved Factoids
Expand each individual work from the timeline and see the cards you saved. Return to the original Title Card in the database at anytime to explore in more depth. Add your own personal notes about what the art meant to you.
Day 5
User Testing
On the fifth day I interviewed 5 people in order to gauge the effectiveness of my assumptions. In general I found that people were able to surmise the main intentions and functionality of the experience. They struggled to grasp the concept of the “art journal” without some extra explanation. Some wanted to organize and categorize the art journal page even more.
Three users described the frequent intention of researching artwork after the museum but failing to do so. They take photos as a bookmark but it gets lots in their camera roll and they forget about it. It was validating to hear they could benefit from a dedicated place to save their gallery visit.
